In conventional systems, marketing purchases (also referred to as advertisement buys) are typically optimized individually and performance measurement and purchase decisions are made separately for each marketing option. An organization can have a large number of available marketing options (advertisement buys) that are priced differently, and deliver different results. For example, search engines have paid listing, where the cost per click to bring a visitor from the search engine is different based on the keyword that the visitor on the search engine searched for and the position at which the advertisement is displayed. Similarly, most web sites have different charges for different contextual advertisement positions.
Thus, an approach that enables a decision maker to make marketing purchase (advertisement buy) decisions, by allocating dollars across a portfolio of marketing options (advertisement buys) so as to meet specific composite goals and performance criteria, is desirable.